"Oh, Excuse Me For Not Willingly Becoming An Amputee!"
That's what the US soldiers who scrounge in Iraqi trash dumps to improvise protective armor for their vehicles must think. 28-year Army Reserve commander, Major Cathy Kaus, just wanted the equipment she needed to do her job properly. The Army didn't provide her with it, so, resourceful lady, she went out and scrounged it up herself with the assistance of Chief Warrant Officer Darrell Birt. You'd think they'd each get a big pat on the back, or maybe even a medal. Nope! Try a court-martial and a dishonorable discharge:

"The soldiers were held accountable for their actions," an Army spokesman said. In other words, Kaus and Darrell were punished for breaking the rules so their troops could do their mission.

But no one holds Rumsfeld accountable for undermining the mission and undercutting the troops.

The recent flap over unarmored humvees - and Rumsfeld's flip remarks to a reservist who complained about having to scavenge for armor - are part of a bigger pattern.

There's a reason why 50,000 reservists were sent to war in 2003 with outdated body armor, and why families had to raise funds to send their loved ones Kevlar vests with ceramic plates. There's a reason so many humvees and trucks are still unarmored.

There's a reason Kaus and Birt had to improvise to sustain their mission: Rumsfeld refused to recognize the nature of the situation into which he sent those troops.

Rumsfeld was so eager to test out his new, lean military machine that he didn't want to plan for the likelihood of instability after Saddam fell. The State Department, the CIA, and many military commanders all urged that more forces be available to establish order after the war.

No way, said Rumsfeld.

According to the Pentagon, the aftermath of the war was supposed to be easy. No military police were sent in to stop postwar looting, which encouraged the rise of the insurgents. Pentagon officials talked about drawing down to 50,000 U.S. troops by fall of 2003.

No wonder no one paid attention to the reservists. They weren't supposed to be on the front lines. The Pentagon never contemplated the prospect of an insurgency, in which the front lines are everywhere.

Even as the insurgency took root Rumsfeld refused to admit the situation was urgent. As late as this month, he tried to blame the shortage of armored humvees on lack of production capacity. Yet the manufacturers of humvees and armored plates for the U.S. military say they aren't running near capacity. They say the Pentagon just hadn't asked them to produce more.

Oops! Rummy makes a boo-boo! Good thing he and his boss don't have any kids in Iraq, or he might be forced to do a little more than rubber-stamp his name on those "so sorry your kid croaked" letters. Is it just me, or is this war starting to bear an increasing resemblance to Custer's Last Stand?